"I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been
somebody-instead of a bum, which is what I am."

Who among us does not ache with Marlon Brando, as the has-been prizefighter
Terry Malloy, when he utters these famous lines in On the Waterfront?
Every astrological house has its secret anguish. In the 10th house
it's failure, the discovery that we didn't make good on our dreams.
I'll never forget the chilling confession of one of my high school
English teachers, the one with the impressive Jesuit education and
the faint smell of alcohol always on his breath. He stared at his
folded hands one day and quietly told me that his life was second
rate: "I settled for a second rate job, a second rate wife, a second
rate home, and second rate kids." I stammered a vague reply. But
inwardly I vowed-as perhaps he did at my age?-that I would never
do the same.

What you make of yourself is a 10th house matter. The 10th describes
your career, your public reputation, your worldly status. It suggests
your optimum contribution to society, the qualities for which you'd
like to be admired and respected. To investigate the "name" you might
make for yourself, look to planets in the 10th and the sign on your
10th house cusp. The cusp of the 10th is known as the "Midheaven," one
of the four important angles of the chart. Early Egyptian astrologers
associated these angles with the daily circuit of the Sun. The Ascendant
signified sunrise; the Descendent, sunset; the bottom of the chart,
or the IC, midnight; and the Midheaven at the top, high noon, when
the Sun reaches maximum glory and strength. The Midheaven represents
the Sun's culmination, its highest reach on the day you were born.
Correspondingly, it signifies how high you can go this lifetime.
But it doesn't say how high you will. And therein lies the drama.
The 10th describes how society measures your life. Are you a hero?
Or a bum.

So intimately is the 10th house tied to success or failure, we can
use it to predict success in simple horary questions. Whatever the
endeavor ("Will I succeed on my test tomorrow?"), assess the relationship
between the planet signifying the questioner and the planet ruling
the 10th house cusp. Good aspects promise a good result. But the
natal chart is not nearly so definitive. Planets in (or ruling) the
natal 10th don't assure us of anything. They will be prominent, but
for what reason, and how widely they'll be seen, is much less clear.
The Moon in the 10th could make you famous. Or notorious. Your face
could be on the cover of People magazine. Or the neighbors could
discover you sleeping in the hedges as they drive off to work.

The 10th shows how others see us-especially those who don't know
us too well. It suggests our reputation among acquaintances, bosses
and coworkers, our mother's book club, distant relatives, strangers
too. We don't care enough about these people to get to know them
better. Yet if their opinion of us is poor, it will bother us greatly.
We care about our public image. And it's nice to have an impressive
10th house calling card. Walk through any graveyard, however, and
the 10th house quickly loses its importance. You won't see "wealthy
banker," "top insurance salesman," or "the sexiest guy on the block" etched
onto any headstone. All the worldly success people struggle for and
achieve dissolves at the cemetery into more personal descriptions: "beloved
husband," "loving mother," "devoted sister." These terms belong to
the house opposite the 10th, the 4th, which rules not only family,
but endings. In deathbed scenes, people rarely express regret or
gather comfort from their life's career choices. They don't wish
for a little extra time to finish up that memo or earn another few
thousand dollars. Rather, they wonder if they loved well enough,
if they used their time to touch life deeply enough, if they traveled
far enough on the spiritual path. Rarely do the dying obsess about
10th house things.

Yet among the living, preoccupation with the 10th is perhaps unmatched
by any other house (except of course the 7th of relationships). Career
matters are often the reason people schedule readings. "What's my
life direction? Is it time for a change? Am I in the right field?" Into
the 10th we're pushed and prodded more than any other area of life.
Meet someone new and you can't help asking a 10th house question: "What
do you do for a living?" And if that person is young: "What do you
want to be when you grow up?" When Branden was in my womb I vowed
not to torment him with this line of inquiry until he was at least
27. I know many people at ages 37, 47, even 57, who still don't know
what to do with their lives. Yet parents will often ask astrologers
to look at a child's chart and divine what Junior will be when he
grows up. Why apply the pressure so soon?

As with many of the things I vowed not to do with my own child (like
threatening Santa Claus would skip our house if Branden didn't go
to sleep on Christmas Eve. it was two in the morning), I succumbed.
There I was, walking with my dog and my then 3-year-old Branden.
The red-tailed hawks floated in wide circles above us, the curious
ravens rattled and cawed from the eucalyptus trees. Suddenly, the
dreaded question came out of my mouth: "So, uh, what are you going
to be when you grow up?" Branden's expression was blank, so I offered
a few suggestions. "A fireman?" "Yes," he said. "Or how about a trash
truck driver?" "Mm-hmm." "A space man?" "Sure." Part of me felt defeated
that I'd asked. And part of me felt this was exactly what we should
be talking about. Giving my son a sense of destination seemed a responsible
plan.

Perhaps it's not the question "What do you want to be when you grow
up?" that's so bad. It's the expectation of nailing down an answer.
I like what Bill Herbst has to say about it: "The question is relevant
whether one's age is nine or ninety, for 'adulthood' usually seems
oddly far off, in the distance yet to come."1 This is especially
true for the always-a-child Pluto in Leos; for them, being four or
forty can feel strangely similar. Their Pluto in Cancer parents would
select a career in their twenties and stick with it until retirement.
Pluto in Libras and Pluto in Virgos are being advised to prepare
for a future of two or three different careers, in order to keep
pace with the changing world ahead of them. Whatever the generation,
where is it written that we're supposed to answer the 10th house
question just once? This is the house of destiny, after all. When
you look at a real life, it's clear that several destinies can appear
in the course of it.

I have a friend with Neptune closely conjunct his Libra Midheaven.
He is currently in the enviable position of having reached one of
the few goals of his life: to retire in his early forties with a
six-figure income. Yet, surprisingly, Gabriel recently admitted that
reaching that milestone hasn't made him particularly happy. Nor does
it much delight or impress his friends, who seem oddly uncomfortable
with him. This is partly due to the circumstances surrounding his
retirement. Gabe's career dissolved with scandal and betrayal, resulting
in a lawsuit against the former business partners with whom he shared
ownership of his company. This brought on a severe depression during
which Gabe virtually disappeared from the world. He is beyond that
funk now, and though his friends don't much press him, to each other
they frequently pose the question, "So, what is he going to do with
his life now?!"

As the most elevated planet in a chart, the one closest to the Midheaven
exerts a potent influence on an individual's life. When Gabriel was
born, Neptune took position as sentry to all his future 10th house
passages. Neptune works with veils, sometimes idealizing, sometimes
disguising material realities. Neptune acts by dissolving, quite
different from the confident structuring we usually want for 10th
house activities. Scandal, betrayal, disillusionment and dropping
out of the world are certainly Neptune-appropriate themes. Gabe's
business was Neptunian too-advertising and marketing-fields that
invent fantasies and sell them to consumers.

Gabe's early retirement wasn't the first time Neptune wrote itself
into his life script. A decade or so earlier, Gabe left his position
as a successful brand manager for one of the top packaged goods companies
in the country. He voluntarily dropped out of corporate America to
work at a dive shop in Mexico, under another cloud of betrayal. His
fiance had been lying and cheating on him. Here was Neptune again,
dissolving one public persona, and summoning him to another. To recover
and renew himself, Gabe led tourists on dives into Neptune's sea.
He knew nothing about his chart, but there was that planet, guiding
his choices again. Is it cosmic chance, comedic fate, or a kind of
divine love that keeps drawing these planetary energies so vividly
into our dramas, timing their unfolding too?

When Neptune and Uranus conjoined in the early 90's, they squared
Gabe's Midheaven/Neptune exactly, bringing the sudden change, disillusionment,
and disappearance that followed. Astrologers interpreted the sudden
changes the Uranus/Neptune conjunction brought as somehow necessary,
liberating even, despite their sometimes trauma or shock. Gabriel's
experience of the transit was no exception. Though he hadn't planned
on leaving his company so soon, for as long as I'd known him he seemed
unhappy in his 10th house corporate role. Neptune on his Midheaven
had always been hard for me to reconcile with his businessman image: "You
should be a poet or a mystic, or a liar and alcoholic" I would tease.
The latter was not too far off. He drank alcohol and smoked pot heavily.
In the final months at his company, rumors about his substance abuse
and mood swings were high. His psyche was begging him to shift his
professional course.

Like a stone falling slowly through water, a planet in a house drops
through all the years of our experience there. It will somehow touch
us at each life stage. Gabe's earliest experience of his Neptune
Midheaven was at seventeen months-he lost his father. In a child's
chart, the 10th represents the parents. Neptune here suggests some
loss, confusion, or deception with one's parents. Modern astrology
designates the 10th as the father's house; traditional astrology
says it's the mother's. An in-between view is that this house describes
the "shaping parent," the one with the greatest influence on that
child's social persona. In Gabe's case, both parents were clothed
in Neptune's garb. One day, Gabe's mom left her husband a good-bye
note on the kitchen table and took the kids a thousand miles away.
Gabriel didn't meet his real dad again until many years later, at
his Saturn return. When Gabe was six, his mother remarried. Cornering
him in his bedroom, her instructions were emphatic: Gabe was never
to let anyone know, under any circumstance, that her new husband
was not his real dad.

This is Gabriel's first memory of a Neptune family message he would
hear many times: Hide who you are. He adopted his stepdad's last
name. Here was Neptune again, for "Harper" wasn't even a real family
name. It was the stage name of his step-grandad, who had tried to
make it as a Hollywood actor under that handle and failed.

A planet in a house is a cosmic transmitting station. It draws down
that energy from the cosmos, and through us, sends it out again.
Gabe claims he can't remember much of his childhood (Neptune can
stimulate the imagination and depress one's consciousness). Gabe
does remember figuring out the smartest policy was to pick a neutral
corner and stay out of the way. Watching his older sister on the
losing end of many battles with his judgmental, look-good-on-the-outside
mother, he learned how to hide. With Libra on his Midheaven he got
good at hiding in a charming, sociable way. He discovered how to
be what people wanted him to be. He carried a world inside his head
that rarely spilled outside of it. Given Gabriel's 10th house, he
might have been an artist or a spiritual devotee. Like an artist,
he has a rich inner life. Like a mystic, he can be in the world,
but not of it. Yet Gabe spent most of his professional life hiding
his true nature. This was the child's 10th house strategy, not the
expression of a confident adult.

Whatever the sign in your 10th house, add the adjective "professional" and
that's what you should be when you grow up. If you've got Gemini
on the Midheaven, you should aspire to become a "professional Gemini." Be
talkative, be curious, be versatile. Be a good listener. Tell lots
of stories. Surprise people with your multiple skills. These requirements
can serve you well in lots of occupations. But be advised: Gemini
traits can make you unsuccessful too. Perhaps you can't stop gossiping.
You can't pick a single direction and commit. Maybe you're too restless
to finish what you start. You change your mind so much, no one trusts
you with a responsible position.

How do you ensure your expression of your 10th house is a positive
one? Whatever the sign in your 10th house, you've got to grow your
professional image beyond your childhood strategies and take your
place in the world with maturity and strength. To do this, you must
take a journey as old as myth. Just getting older won't do it. You
have to kill the king, or in modern parlance, face the boss. Modern
astrologers give Saturn the natural rulership of this house. Saturn
is the planet of authority. And claiming your authority is THE 10th
house passage. A child has no choice but to listen to its authority
figures. An adult must grapple with these figures, good or bad, and
overtake them.

Long ago, the link between your parents and your professional status
was easy to understand. In other days and other cultures, your birthright,
your family's social standing, had everything to do with who you
would become. Many literally joined the family business or followed
the family trade. Today we're told we can be whatever we want; we
can go as far as we're willing to take ourselves. Yet the shadow
of our family legacy still must be faced. Opposite the 10th is the
4th house, that midnight place which whispers to us in the dark,
echoing with old, remembered voices that tell us who we really are.
It's these voices we need to examine and confront on the way to claiming
our authority. Think of John Lennon in his 10th house onstage at
the Madison Square Gardens. It didn't matter that he had won the
acclaim of millions. There he was alone with a piano, in a howling
infantile rage, screaming, "Mother, I loved you, but you didn't love
me," ending with a pain-filled chorus of "Mama don't go, Daddy come
home!" One's psychological inheritance defines the new 10th house
battlefield.

For years I worked as a manager in a corporate setting. There were
over a hundred people where I worked, and just as many family dramas.
Some days it seemed that mythical parent-child battles were all that
was really going on. Become an authority figure and you'll quickly
find this out. Your intentions are misperceived, your praise is never
enough, your criticisms are exaggerated and devastating. In fact
you're not really you at all, but some god or monster, depending
on their filter. If you want to be liked, forget it, because everyone
really does need to kill you in order to grow.

Planets in the 10th and/or ruling the Midheaven suggest how you
perceive authority figures. Of course this conditions the way they'll
see you too. My sister and I shared the same family nest, but Jupiter
occupies my 10th, Pluto hers. We saw our parents, and our own positions
in the family, quite differently. True to Jupiter, I was the "lucky" one.
I was successful. I was encouraged to continually expand my horizons.
I won awards in school. I made my teachers happy. Later I found bosses
who encouraged, praised, and promoted me. Still, I was dancing to
their tune; if I wasn't successful in their eyes, I was a nervous
child. Jupiter was expected of me. Wherever I went, I was looking
for an "A" from those in charge. It was a highly functional strategy,
but a child's nonetheless. Transits and progressions to the Midheaven
time significant opportunities in claiming one's own authority. When
the progressed Moon opposed my Midheaven, I quit my job and did many
months of inner work. When I returned to the company, my boss was
no longer the mommy and daddy I was trying to please. He was just
a businessman, a plain old human with strengths and flaws. I didn't
need his approval anymore. I had my own. Since that time, I began
to give my Jupiter to others, continually encouraging those who worked
for me to expand their horizons and grow.

My sister breathed Pluto in her childhood, sensing hidden agendas
and overt power struggles everywhere, a perception she's carried
into her adult universe. Just as bright as I was, she nontheless
dropped out of college a number of times, and worked sporadically
at dozens of jobs and careers. Donna Cunningham has called Pluto
the "fail for spite" planet2, and this is never more true than when
it falls in the 10th. My sister has spent years struggling with the
powerlessness my parents' authority made her feel. She's lived awhile
on money from the state, still supported like a child. When Pluto
squared her Midheaven, she began her inner work, including facing
incest issues (appropriate for Pluto). When her progressed Moon crossed
into her 10th, she made some dramatic changes. She enrolled in school
again and started studying for a career as therapist (also appropriate
for Pluto). The biggest change in her 10th house was that she'd recently
become a parent herself. She was finally ready to become the boss
herself.

Getting married, divorced, or becoming a parent will often be indicated
by transits to the Midheaven, for these are public as well as personal
milestones. They change our social status. But for every outer change
there must be an inner resonance. The 10th and 4th houses are in
constant dialogue. We could think of planets in both these houses
as having before and after pictures-before we "face the boss" and
after. Often the "before" picture is something a child's eyes would
conceive-idealized or exaggerated. The inner child's need for approval
often drives one's early 10th-house dreams. In On the Waterfront,
you can hear this child in Terry Malloy's angry and wistful claim
that he could have been a contender. For most of the movie Malloy
is trapped in the past. He's nothing but a former prizefighter whose
career was trashed when he was forced to take a dive. Though a man,
he's called "kid" by the union boss who continues to push him around.

According to traditional astrology, no planet "joys" in the 10th
house, but Mars is its natural ruler. Mars is the action planet.
It goes after and/or fights for what it wants. Through Mars, we express
our will. Wherever Mars falls in our chart, we cannot go far in the
10th house, if we don't also apply it there. At the end of On The
Waterfront, Malloy finally understands this mandate. He stands up
to boss Johnny Friendly and tells the truth about the corrupt union
system. He fights Friendly in a climactic scene, a sloppy fight,
where he is outnumbered and badly beaten. Yet his fearless testimony
ultimately brings the union down, and as Malloy struggles to stand
on the docks, supported by a grateful and admiring crowd, he walks
like a genuine hero. This is the real fighter he was meant to become.
He faced the boss in the 10th and came out a winner.

Such a victory can belong to you, too. For details, check out the
story in your 10th house.

Notes:

Bill Herbst, Houses of the Horoscope, (ACS: 1988),
p. p.55.

Donna Cunningham, Healing Pluto Problems, (Weiser:
1988), p. 19

TWELVE
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